Why are readers and writers perpetually drawn to the mystery, reinventing its plot twists and stock characters—the detective, the criminal, ingénue, the femme fatale—in endless ways? Brilliant young fiction writer Alix Ohlin (The Missing Person and Babylon and Other Stories) says it’s because detective stories reflect the way we judge our own society: who’s an insider and who’s an outsider, who’s corrupt and who’s innocent, who’s capable of changing the world and who can find the clues to make sense of it. No crime, even a fictional one, takes place out of context. And mysteries, which tap into the darkest shades of that social context, speak to the chaos each of us may suspect is lurking beneath the surface of our days.